Kristy's Rainy Day Picnic

by Olive Thorne Miller

Maggie—for that was her name—with a cry of horror sprang eagerly after them, picked them up carefully, shook off the dust, and turned again to the little garden. But Miss Hester had gone in and shut the door, and slowly, but in a state of rapture, the child went on—hugging and caressing her flowers,—to what had been her home since her mother, a year before, had been carried from their poor room to the hospital, and never come back. She lived with a woman who added a bit to her scanty earnings by taking the village cows on their morning and evening journeys, and for this service she gave Maggie a shelter and a share of the scanty food on her table.

When she went with the cows that evening, Maggie looked eagerly into the little garden as she passed, but Miss Hester was not there. Maggie could not see her, but she sat behind her blind looking out eagerly. Could it be to see the child?

Maggie hesitated; she wanted to say “Thank you,” yet she was half afraid of the strange, silent woman. She waited a moment, hoping she would come out, but all was still, and slowly and lingeringly at last she went on.

In this odd way began a curious acquaintance between the lonely woman and the still more friendless girl. Sometimes, if Miss Hester happened to be in her garden when Maggie went by, she would half reluctantly toss a flower over the fence, which Maggie always received with delight, while still half afraid of the giver. But generally Hester, with a strange feeling of shyness, managed to be in the house, where strange to say, she hung around the window and seemed unable to settle to anything, till the pale little thing had passed.

So it went on, till winter settled down grim and cold on that New England village, and the cows went no more to the snow-covered pasture, and Maggie—fixed up a bit as to clothes by some kind ladies of the village—went every day to school.

As the weather grew colder, Miss Hester shut herself more and more into her house, and so months passed and the strange acquaintance progressed no farther.

One cold night, after everybody in the little village was snugly tucked into bed, and every light was out, a wind came down from the plains of the great Northwest, and brought with it millions and billions of beautiful dancing flakes of snow, and proceeded to have a grand frolic.

All night long the snow and the wind played around the houses and through the streets, and in the morning when people began to get up and look out, they hardly knew their own village. It seemed to be turned into a strange range of white hills, with here and there a roof or a chimney peeping out. There were no fences, there were no roads, but all was one mass of glittering white, and the wind was still at work tossing the billions of sharp little ice-needles into the face of any one who ventured to peep out, sending a shower of snow into an open door, and piling it up in great drifts in every sheltered spot. So nearly everybody who was comfortable at home, and had plenty to eat in the house, at once decided to stay there. There was no use trying to dig themselves out until the snow stopped falling, and the wind got tired of tossing it about.

The villagers were late in getting up, for the snow before the windows made it dark, and it was nearly nine o’clock when Mrs. Burns said to Maggie, “You must try to get to the well; I’m out of water.”

So Maggie put on her coat and mittens, tied her hood down over her ears, took the pail, and went out.